Even Colin Baker was good as the Doctor, what with his very rough start and the 6th's personality quirks. As far as I know, there has not been a bad Doctor in terms of acting and them being believable as The Doctor. Some take longer to sell it than others. While Peter Capaldi himself is brilliant as the Doctor, it took a little bit in show to become convincing due to the writing. Matt Smith was clearly the Doctor within the first part of his first episode (Fish Fingers and Custard basically sold it) and was without shadow of a doubt by the ending confrontation and declaration of "Hello, I am the Doctor. Basically....run." David Tennant was the Doctor by the end of the episode, but to be fair, he was asleep for most of that episode. Chis Eccleston became the new default, and is the only one I'm not sure if he fit the pervious Doctors or not. He probably did, just I'm not remembering very well. Older Who transitions also would have to convince the audience, and the companion, that they were still the Doctor. Patrick Troughton of course had to do it first and from what I've seen/heard of the Power of the Daleks, he did it very well, setting the eventual pattern of regeneration stories. Everyone one of the remaining Doctors usually had sold the audience on them being The Doctor by the end of their first series of four to six episodes. Tom Baker didn't actually sell it....he more or less reinvented it He was not the Doctor....the Doctor had actually always been Tom Baker, and hid it from everyone. The following Doctors have also been the Tom Baker, just decided to stick with The Doctor, as it sounds less intimidating to various species. If the 11th Doctor had been declaring himself as the Tom Baker, well....lets not imagine the end of the universe too soon shall we.
When was it first established that the Doctor wasn't human? That he could regenerate? That he had two hearts? That he was a Time Lord? That he was from Gallifrey? That he had a frenemy called The Master? That he was half human on his mother's side? That he was the last of the Time Lords? That he had an unknown incarnation we know as the War Doctor? That he wasn't the last of the Time Lords? None of that was there from the beginning of the show. Writers and producers came up with new ideas that added to his backstory and character and fans accepted them. This is another of those new ideas. Years from now people will read about today and be surprised that anyone saw this development as any different from any of the above changes. Helpful suggestion: if you're going to bang on about political correctness, you're admitting you have nothing of value to add to the conversation, and you obviously haven't been reading the thread.
You would hope that.(because she is a good actress) But i doubt it. There has been pressure in recent years from certain fans, groups, to have the doctor turn female.
I know. Don't like the word though. Sounds unpleasant, and already gets bandied as an insult. We didnt need a new one of those. It's a silly thing, but there we are. Always some new box to stuff in or fight over.
Uh, yeah, because audiences are tired of seeing white men in almost every protagonist role. It bores people. That's not PC pressure, that's just audience preferences based on people living in diverse societies that they expect to be represented in media, too. In a world where most people realize that diversity is part of everyday life and women aren't just "sidekicks" or "love interests", it'd be irritating to keep making the Doctor a white man when that is absolutely not needed for his/her character or the stories he/she is in. If we only allow women and minorities to be protagonists in new franchises, it'll be incredibly hard to change much because established franchises are incredibly powerful in an age that sees Hollywood and other producers rely on established stuff with built-in fanbases instead of creating genuinely new content. It's not like white men are in danger of being underrepresented.
Yeah, lets just ignore the whole blowing a fuckton of Cybermen up just to use their surveillance equipment.
From what I remember, him being truely alien was closer to the Pertwee era, the two hearts even later than that, "Time Lord" was used to refer to future humans and only years later again around Pertwee to mean aliens. Gallifrey I can't remember, more the Baker years as well as the Master appearing. Half human on his mothers side was a line in the 1996 movie that was ignored when it went back to TV. War Doctor didn't appear until well into the Smith years. They've been making this stuff up on the fly for 50 of the 54 years.
You're the only one I see fighting here. Nobody here uses cis as an insult. Nothing to fight over, really.
Meh to the casting news. The actor playing the role has never been the problem, what's stopped me and most of my friends watching has been the horrible writing/scripts the last few years. Any chance they'll cast a different type of companion other than plucky modern day London girl? I would be interested in seeing a different dynamic with a female doctor and a companion; mature woman, awkward girl, or a guy for a change would be fun to explore or get a perspective from.
Trans means across, cis means same side. You don't get to say you are the norm and default while trans people are something else. Just like how heterosexual people don't get to say they aren't heterosexual because they're the norm and the default. You're just another kind of people like everyone else. You're also binary, as opposed to non-binary. More labels will be added as we become more accepting of the wide variety of humans.
Enh. I would be more behind it if there hadn't been such a hard push from a segment of the fan base. This doesn't feel natural to me as a result; instead it feels like an appeasement gimmick. That kind of appeasement usually doesn't work out either (as a long list of other shows can attest to with appeasing "'shipper" fans). I'm not excited for it or even really interested.
Fans and the actors have been pushing for a female Doctor since the 80s. It should have happened years ago.
I love that whenever a protagonist is cast as somebody other than a white man there are people calling that a "gimmick". Like it's not normal to have a woman or black man playing that role. I live in a society where half the people are female and there is a considerable amount of ethnic diversity. I personally would see it as a weird "gimmick" if all protagonists kept being white men since that is not the world I live in. Casting a woman isn't a "gimmick", it's just normal.
Yeah, that would probably be more amusing if Simm coming back with the beard and Jacobi having one in the War master promo picture thing didn't make me start wondering if the Master is so attached to the damned thing that Missy actually would have tried to grow one at some point.
Never even heard of it before. Is this a European thing, as I've not heard it out of San Francisco at all.
White male is considered the default, all because white males run everything. It just shows the priviledge of the people who resist any change, they've seen themselves in media their whole lives and never questioned it. Now others are getting to see themselves and they're whining because they have to share now. I really hope Missy comes back again just to call the Doctor a copycat.
Agreed, but you'd never know it by the amount of bleating that goes on every time something like this happens. I swear, some people (mostly middle aged white men) seem to think equality is about things staying as they are, despite the scales already being firmly tipped in our favour and that tipping the scales even slightly in the other direction is somehow "unequal" and not the redressing the balance that it actually is. I don't disagree with the sentiment, but I'd temper it by saying that at least part of the reason "white male" is often considered default is that (depending on context of course) it's also considered "safe". I've noticed a low-level anxiety in over the last few decades about inclusiveness being misconstrued as tokenism, or just executed poorly and causing offence. Admittedly this generally applies less to gender representation than it does to sexuality, race and culture. It still circles back to these decisions being made largely by older white men, but it mostly seems to be more a case of benign neglect than malicious exclusion (one's mileage may vary of course.) Hopefully that's changing now as content creators get less timid about such things and more persons of the not white and/or male persuasion get in positions of influence. I hope the Doctor's *only* reaction to her new appearance when she first see's her reflection is "Damn it. Still not ginger!"
Indeed. Sydney Newman (you know, the guy who created Doctor Who) suggested Joanna Lumley back in 1986.